Myles George Glasgow: Interests

Myles George Glasgow: Interests

We are a family with a variety of interests. Edee is retired from directing Woodley House in Washington, DC where she worked for 40 years until we moved to Skokie, Il. I am employed by another attorney in Chicago where we do civil litigation. Our son is a senior in high school.

Edee is from El Centro in Southern California, a nisei, incarcerated in her early teens in 1942 at Poston in Arizona with her parents, four sisters and surviving brother and thousands of other Japanese Americans. Edee graduated from the University of Illinois as an occupational therapist, trained to work with multi disciplinary staff dealing with troubled and autistic children, with whom she worked in Norway around 1959 and before that having worked in the States in a research program with Fritz Reidl.

Joan Doniger started Woodley House around 1959, a halfway house for mentally ill persons able to avoid hospitalization but needing their own place to live, though they share it with perhaps 25 other men and women as their home while they went to work or volunteered in the Washington, DC area and complied with their medical care. Joan and Edee were professional staff who split staff work by working 24 and 36 or 48 hour shifts at a time, cutting down personnel costs and providing Woodley House with continuity. In 1968 a book was written by Harold L. Raush and his wife Charlotte L. Raush entitled The Halfway House Movement: A Search for Sanity as part of the Century Psychology Series. The dedication is to Joan Doniger and Edith Maeda. Much of the book discusses their experiences.

Joan was killed in New York in 1972 by a cab while she was holding the hand of her oldest daughtet, 4 year old Kiyo. Teresa, her younger daughter, was still in Washington, DC. Joan's death was tragic and a great loss to many, certainly to Edee who took over the directorship of Woodley House with the support of a great many extraordinary Washingtonians who served on the Board of Directors until she retired and moved to Skokie in 2000. Today, Edee and her sister Grace live in Skokie, Illinois and her brother, Robert lives in Massachusetts. Edee has always had strong family ties with her parents, siblings and neices and nephews and has developed that same feeling into our family of herself, me and Jose Luis, our son.

Our son was born in Guatemala and we adopted him when he was 11 months through a series of events that assured me that God wanted the three of us together. Nothing in my life prepared me for the sequencing of accidental events which all fit together at a key time when each seemed most improbable. He is a private person who enjoys his pleasures and friends in a low key fashion with lots of laughter which we share. He is maturing and we are happy to be with him during these important years because he gives us pleasure, laughs and opportunities to share our love with him and his with us.

I lost my dad after first grade as one of the six children of my mom and dad, when they were 37 years of age, due to his cancer of the little intestine, the jujunum, which had spread silently to invade his liver and other organs, so that he was operated on in May 7, 1949 and he died July 11, 1949. I remember that in those two months he went from a strong 37 year older to one who looked like a weak 99 year older in those two months. I abandoned my rebellious emotions, my high school love and a chance to go to Georgetwon University in Washington, DC. when I joined the Augustinian seminary after high school in 1960 till half a year before ordination in 1967 when I quit rather than be delayed due to surperiors' "black ball" votes. I worked for a year in President Johnson's anti-poverty program, finished graduate theology and philosophy studies and obtained a conscientious objector draft status. I wanted to get married and have a family but was obviously not focused, well employed or "timely" , and Nixon got elected on a wave of racism which encouraged me to complete my liberal education by living in Europe where I went to Dijon, France to research and write my thesis for an MA in Philosophy. Instead of living in Dijon for two years as I planned, I moved on once I wrote the thesis and traveled around earth within the next year, mostly by hitch hiking, practicing my French, living on a French speaking Kibbutz for a couple of months, traveling in Africa, by ship to several Asian cities, and hitch hiking in Japan for three weeks before traveling in Mexico for a couple of weeks, which I did with Edee and a dear friend of hers, Janice Matsusuyu from Los Angeles. Ultimately I went to the Antioch School of Law, married Edee, surviving various stresses, undergoing analysis for a couple of years in the late 80's and beginning the 90's as the father at home caring for his son while practicing law from the dining room table in Washington, DC.

In the course of this we have many dear friends, many of whom live far from Skokie, though we are making new ones in the Chicago area. Thank God for email which keeps us close to many of our friends.